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A computer science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, feeling isolated and alienated in a department where he was a poor fit, referred to the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech in a conversation with colleagues who already found him hostile.

A senior history major at Aurora University, in a dispute with a professor teaching a required course, allegedly made a threatening comment that included a reference to both the Virginia Tech shootings and those in 2008 at Northern Illinois University.

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among college students and the third-leading cause of death among all youth 15 to 24 years old, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. More than 4,000 people in that age range commit suicide each year.

A new book on campus crime -- The Dark Side of the Ivory Tower: Campus Crime as a Social Problem (Cambridge University Press) -- looks at why campus crime has been viewed differently at different times in American history, and how various groups have defined the dangers facing American college students. The book also examines how different kinds of activists, such as feminists and family members of crime victims, have framed campus crime issues in different ways.

ST. LOUIS -- Many high schools have policies under which, if a student is cited for a disciplinary infraction as a freshman or sophomore, and isn’t a repeat offender, that infraction is expunged from the student’s record at the end of the sophomore year. What that means is that for two students who commit the same infraction -- even a serious one -- there is no assurance that colleges that seek disciplinary records during the admissions process will know about it.

WASHINGTON -- In the aftermath of the 2004 murder of a University of North Carolina at Wilmington student by a classmate with a history of violence against women, the deceased student's family came to see the decision-making of the university’s admissions office as one of the major factors leading to her death.

Anastasia Megan, a 13-year-old Florida girl who has nearly completed her high-school curriculum via homeschooling, tried to take dual-enrollment courses at Lake-Sumter Community College last year. She was denied entry, however, by administrators who thought she was not ready to sit alongside older students in the classroom. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is now investigating whether the decision violated anti-bias law – raising an issue that comes up at other community colleges as well.

Of all the things Cornell University wants to be known for, suicide isn’t among them. And yet, after years of trying to shake the image that it’s a “suicide school,” as one official called it Monday, recent deaths have made it difficult not to associate the upstate New York institution with an above-average suicide rate.